Tuesday, November 27, 2012

The preceding quote was made by a commenter in response to Bill Price's article at The Spearhead yesterday, in which Price made the point that the current child support system is essentially a tax to encourage single mother hood.

Price is 100% correct! The State actively promotes single mother hood as the justification to grow the vast leviathan of bureaucratic Government to achieve the total enslavement of the citizenry. That IS the primary purpose for creating the system as it currently operates.

To paraphrase my comment in response to Bill's article:

Never forget about Part D, Title IV of the Social Security Act.
The Federal Government gives matching funds for every dollar collected in the name of child support, to fund the scope and size of Bureaucratic machine.
In other words, it’s official Federal Government policy to pay each State for breaking up families and collecting support obligations from Fathers. The more child support the State collects from Dad’s, the more funding they get from the Federal Government.
There is a vast entity in the State Government Bureaucracy for which they are incentivized to collect as much child support as they can.
The Federal Government uses our tax revenues to literally pay for the destruction of our families.

Divorce sends many harmful messages to children and future citizens: that we can break vows we make to God and others; that family members may be discarded at will. But among the most destructive are about the role of government: that government is their de facto parent that may exercise unlimited power (including remove and criminalize their real parent) merely by claiming to act for their greater good.
While feminists push divorce-on-demand as a “civil liberty,” in practice divorce has become our society’s most authoritarian institution.

Fighting for 50/50 custody default is NOT a desirable result to fight for. If this is what a Men's Rights Movement decides to fight for, good luck with that gentlemen. You are merely fighting for the right to dictate the terms of your enslavement.

What does a 50/50 default custody truly represent? A three way parenting model. The Ex-Husband, the Ex-Wife and THE STATE being the final arbiter and decision maker in child raising decisions.

In other words, we'll call it 50/50 default custody, but what it will be in practice is 25/25/50 custody. 25% for Mom, 25% for Dad, and 50% THE STATE.

As Baskerville pointed out:

Using instruments of public criminal justice to punish private hurts turns the family into government-occupied territory. The children experience family life not as a place of love, cooperation, compromise, trust, and forgiveness. Instead they receive a firsthand lesson in tyranny. Empowered by the state and functioning essentially as a government official, the custodial parent can issue orders to the non-custodial parent, undermine his authority with the children, dictate the terms of his access to them, talk to and about him contemptuously and condescendingly in the presence of the children as if he were himself a naughty child – all with the backing of state officials.

Eventually the children understand that the force keeping away one of their parents is the police, who are the guarantors of the custodial parent’s supremacy. Thus the message the children receive about both the family and the state is that they are dictatorships, ruled by an arbitrary power which can be marshaled against private enemies and even family members for personal grievances. If a loved one disagrees with us or hurts our feelings or is simply no longer desired, there is no need for forgiveness because a telephone call will have him removed, and the police will make sure he stays away. And if the police can be used to arrest Dad because he does something Mom doesn’t like, what will they do to me if I do something Mom doesn’t like?

This is the real purpose of the Divorce Court industry. Not to arbitrate fairness or equality when a marriage goes bad, but to advance the cause of authoritarian tyranny by the State into the most private sphere of We the Sheeple's lives.

To quote a true MAndrosphere pioneer, Rob Fedders (seems like Rob has once again taken a break and gone fishing,):

“Free men” don’t beg for a piece of the pie from “the master.”
Free men bake their own damn pies, and tell everyone else to “fuck off!”
If you think the government will solve your problems with shared parenting, you are begging for your piece."

This is why I believe there really is no "Men's Rights Movement." The minute we embrace an agreed upon leader and an agreed upon platform for political action, the movement will be co-opted, subverted and re-directed (just like the so-called Tea Party and Occupy movements) towards more empowerment of the State in ALL of our lives, men and women alike.

To quote Fedders again:

Look, this isn’t a fight between men and women so much as it is a fight against our freedom.
Women are simply the best way to start the machine to self-destruct.

The whole “point” of marriage used to be father-custody. Back before the days of romance, when marriage used to be an economic contract, marriage & wedlock birth was all about putting children into the possession of men. In the rare event of a divorce, the custody of the child was automatically given to the husband. If the child was young, the mother would sometimes care for it until around 6 or 7 years old, and then would be forced to turn over the child to the father for education and proper discipline.

The whole concept of wedlock birth is to create legitimate, father-custody children. When an “oops-pregnancy” would occur, the first question out of the woman’s mouth would be “will you give the child your name?” As in, will you make this child legitimate, and show it by giving him your name – and not a hyphenated pseudo name either!

Women don’t actually “need” marriage to have children. They can get boffed by any number of men through a variety of seductive techniques, of which I think we are all aware of. Men however, did “need” marriage to have children, and thus, children born within wedlock are to belong to the man, while children born out of wedlock are to belong to the woman.

That is the only political goal Men's Rights Activist should be working for...the reinstatement of marriage 1.0.

To those who've never heard of it, Dr. Amneus wrote a book about the topic. You can download it free as a .pdf file here: The Case for Father Custody.

Children born in Wedlock = HIS, along with all the responsibilities and costs of raising them.
Children born out of Wedlock = HERS, along with all the responsibilities and costs of raising them.

Anything other than that is just fighting for the right to have THE STATE rule that the baby should just be cut in half, and both the man and woman forced to pay for that "service."

Friday, November 23, 2012

So my comment section on my last post has once again devolved into another iteration of the Gamers vs. Anti-Gamers debate that happens all over teh MAndrosphere. (some prefer the Manosphere, others, Androsphere. I don't particularly care who calls it what, so I'll just apply the Hegelian Dialect and go with the Synthesis, Teh MAndrosphere TM from here on out. lozlzolzol)

You're missing the point. It's not about giving or getting credit or status. It's not about appointing Roissy (or anyone else in these fringes of teh interwebz) as some sort of authority figure, hero or Godfather.

It's not about whether MGTOW or PUA, or MRA or Married Gamers or Paleo Diet adherents or Christian anti-Frivolous Divorce Crusaders, or White Nationalists are all part of this movement or that movement, or that we need to purge any or all of these factions from this so-called MRM in order to finally get together with common cause and "fix" the problems we all deal with by going mainstream.

There's nothing to fix in terms of society, the political system or pop culture. It's working precisely as it was designed to, in feeding our minds lies, half-truths and delusions, so that we embrace our slavery without even realizing it. Every niche and faction in Teh MAndrosphere has it's own contribution to attaining Red Pill clarity.

There is only truth.

Everyone thinks they understand "THE RED PILL."

But most are only focused on one or two areas of our modern life in which they believe the red pill has made clear for them. Sex. Relationships. Sexual Marketplace Value. Marriage Market Place Value. The Divorce System meat grinder. These topics are essentially 90% of the conversation of teh MAndrosphere. It's all good and necessary truths that need to be discovered and explored by everyone who happens to stumble upon our little virtual revolution out here on the fringe.

But the only true red pill, is the one that helps you see the entirety of the Matrix for what it is.

The dysfunction of modern human mating and familial relationships is a state of affairs purposefully and deliberately socially engineered into our mass consciousness.

Mind control. Brainwashing.

For what purpose? For many, it's some grand conspiracy of the entire Female Gender following the herd led by professional class Feminists, to subjugate the male gender into perpetual subservience to the Feminine Imperative.

This is missing the forest for the trees. The "feminists" at the top of the movement, are in fact useful idiots and/or mass culture change agents. Usually both.

The Feminine Imperative is simply a program used by the social engineers who have a true understanding of human nature, who use this understanding to deliberately manipulate the masses, to herd us all into desired behaviors.

Population CONTROL. Human Resources Management.

Why does our public school and mass media driven society emasculate young men, pedestalize women, and incentivize the destruction of the Patriarchal Family as the base building blocks for society?

Why are the near limitless tales of these things occurring in countless lives across the globe, the ceaseless grist for teh MAndrosphere grill?

The answer is simple, really. We the Sheeple are human resources for the profits of the Global Corporate State's Shareholders.

All these things we discuss, debate and derogate in teh MAndrosphere,
all stem from this agenda of control of us all, teh Menz and they Womynz
alike. All of our wants and needs that used to be served for us by our
familial structures and social bonds, have all been outsourced to our
Corporate Overlords. The subsidized single mother household has been subsidized to assure future revenue streams for our Corporate society.

John Taylor Gatto served for 30 years as a human resources programmer.

Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are
to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to
build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.

Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every
aspect of our lives.

Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at
relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal
self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to
entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions.

We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments
and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments
that would insult actual adults.

We buy televisions, and then we buy the
things we see on the television.

We buy computers, and then we buy the
things we see on the computer.

We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them
or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair. We drive
SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance,
even when we're upside-down in them. And, worst of all, we don't bat an
eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to "be careful what you say," even if
we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is
the land of the free. We simply buy that one too.

Our schooling, as
intended, has seen to it.

Now for the good news. Once you
understand the logic behind modern schooling, its tricks and traps are
fairly easy to avoid.

School trains children to be employees and
consumers; teach your own to be leaders and adventurers.

School trains
children to obey reflexively; teach your own to think critically and
independently.

Well-schooled kids have a low threshold for boredom; help
your own to develop an inner life so that they'll never be bored. Urge
them to take on the serious material, the grown-up material, in history,
literature, philosophy, music, art, economics, theology - all the stuff
schoolteachers know well enough to avoid.

Challenge your kids with
plenty of solitude so that they can learn to enjoy their own company, to
conduct inner dialogues.

Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread
being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the
computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly
acquired and quickly abandoned.

Your children should have a more
meaningful life, and they can.

First, though, we must wake up to
what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young
minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society
demands. Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its
real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have
their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could
take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas
Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin
could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself
through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's
no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty
years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as
common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet
figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women.

The
solution, I think, is simple and glorious.

Let them manage themselves.

Feminism, socialism, cultural marxism, liberalism, neo-con imperialism. All are -isms designed to get us to plug ourselves firmly into the Matrix of Human Resource Control. The red pills we discuss in teh MAndrosphere are all related to all these aspects. How we eat. How we sleep. How we fight, how we fuck, how we breed. How we parent.

To reiterate Gatto's primary point:

"Well-schooled people are conditioned to dread
being alone, and they seek constant companionship through the TV, the
computer, the cell phone, and through shallow friendships quickly
acquired and quickly abandoned."

Teh MAndrosphere is the grass roots, counter-cultural push back...a movement of speaking truth to power. In there own ways, each niche or variation of Teh MAndrosphere contributes to this quest for these ugly truths in a world of beautiful lies.

The PUA lifestyle is not for me...but that doesn't mean I have nothing to learn from their own experiences they share here. Same goes for the White Nationalists. Same goes for the MGTOW, the anti-feminist MRM perspectives. Take what knowledge and experience each faction offers can contribute to your overall knowledge, and figure out the ways to make the best of our own individual situations.

To attempt to change the mainstream is like trying to use a fan to blow away a hurricane. To get swept up in some kind of collective movement...to place your hopes for change in any kind of collective action through mainstream approved courses of action are all destined for failure to make any meaningful changes.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Several prominent blogs in this fringe sector of teh Interwebz have recently shut down, prompting several other blogs, bloggers and commenters to declare that the manosphere is dead, or dying, or failing or whatever.

Some folks even claim to be responsible for getting these blogs to shut down. lzolzlolozlzolzol.

Those who think otherwise are failing to understand the reason why the Manosphere arose in the first place, and what keeps it going...as some of our more favored bloggers throw in the towel and call it quits, others quickly arise with their own voices, their own stories and their own perspectives.

That is because the Manosphere is founded on people discovering and discussing TRUTH.

More specifically, it is an organic, grass roots response to all the deliberate lies, delusions and deceptions our mass media driven society has attempted to brainwash and blind us with since we were born into this Brave New World Order.

When folks like Mentu, Ashur, Mojo, Will, 7man, CL, Duncan, Solomon, Ferdinand Bardamu, and others decide to quit, other newcomers "take the red pill", and gain the tools to properly analyze their past and understand their observations of life in this feedlot we call "society."

Go back and read it all the way through. And then go back and do it again.

Force yourself to do it. I did.

It’s that important.

It’s that important because right now, somewhere on this continent, a
man writhes in agony, a victim of his parents and teachers who told him
to “be nice.”

It’s that important because right now a man is trying to figure out
why for the 17th time a woman has rejected him and said she “just
doesn’t feel it”.

It’s that important because right now a man is preparing to marry a
28 year old former semi-professional cum receptacle. He thinks she’s
the bee’s knees. She thinks he will be a great father for her kids and
will soon buy her her house for nesting. He thinks she’s hot. She
thinks he’s reliable. He is in love. She is planning how best to use
him. He wants to make a life with her. She wants him as an
accessory to her life. He thinks she’s a victim of failed
relationships. She knows he is her last chance to lock down a man as
she gets kicked off the carousel and The Wall looms large before her.

It’s that important because right now a wife is plotting her “I’m not
haaaaappy” divorce from her husband of 10 years. It’s that important
because he will not see it coming and it will flatten him like a Mack
truck.

It’s that important because right now a newly divorced man, court
orders in hand, is moving out of his 4 bedroom colonial in the suburbs,
and into a studio apartment on the wrong side of the city with little
more than what he could fit in his car. Tonight that man will eat a
fast food dinner while sitting on a used recliner he bought with his
last bit of cash. He’ll watch some TV before going to bed on the
pullout mattress. As he rests his head, he’ll wonder how all this
happened to him. He’ll fear for his children, and wonder when he’ll see
them again. And he’ll ask himself how he will ever comply with the
court orders he’s just been given.

Deti's comment is precisely right. It is why many of us do what we do. When any of us feel we have nothing more to contribute, or are in danger of losing something for speaking truth to power, others like M3 will inevitably continue to come forward and let their voices be heard.

As Ulysses remarked recently about all this turnover in the Manosphere: "The bards shall come and go, but the song remains the same."

To those who are newcomers to these fringes of Teh Interwebz, here's a quick rundown of how this place became what it is today.

The Manosphere is the bastard child of another blog that no longer exists.

That place was called "Roissy in D.C." The Manosphere arose from the comment threads of that place.

The Spearhead, In Mala Fide, and other blogs to numerous to mention have been inspired by both Roissy's blogging and the debates and commentary in the threads of his daily blog posts that regularly got 800+ comments. Til this very day, people discover the archives of Roissy in D.C. over at Chateau Heartiste, and they find THE RED PILL.

The Manosphere in sum total is the Red Pill. If you're reading this, you most likely have already begun your journey to see how far the rabbit hole goes.

As long as we live in a world for which lies and delusions promulgated by mass media indoctrination and institutionalized thought control systems are raising generations of deluded, unbalanced, sick and stunted sheeple, and we have THIS place where we can go to figure it all out, this "Manosphere" will exist.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

"Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick." -- Bruce Lee

Before you begin
learning an art such as photography, the techniques it takes to practice
the art are undifferentiated to you. All cameras and lenses look pretty
much alike, you're not aware of differences in quality and direction of
light, and differences in visual style appear subtle at best.

As you begin to learn the art, however, your mind and awareness begin
to expand. You see things you never noticed before. Things that were
once unimportant become extremely important. It's easy to become
obsessed with a particular style or technique, the Right Way to do
something, or owning The Perfect Lens.

You might even look down on
photographers who lack your refined knowledge and sensibilities.

If you're fortunate and you stick with it long enough you'll find
yourself coming out the other side. Where you were once focused on
differences you now begin to look at things more holistically. Equipment
and techniques are simply means to an end and your vision is far more
important than the tools it takes to achieve it. A camera is just a
camera, a lens is just a lens, and software is just software.

In short, the path to mastery is to integrate what you learn so that
it becomes as much a part of you as the way you walk, the way you talk,
and the way you sign your name. You do them all without thinking and
without effort, yet they express more about who you really are than all
the clever tricks you know or masks you wear.

This is the truth for anyone seeking to attain mastery of any endeavor. The guitarist who can play a solo without watching his hands, the pianist that closes her eyes while playing a difficult and complex arrangement; the artwork turned out by the skilled hands of the sculptor, the painter, the candlestick maker...all are the results of this journey along 4 stages of awareness. As commenter "Syed" notes at the end of Shutterfinger's piece:

In my
first regular job (not related to photography and just fresh out of
college) one of the senior guys told me that I would typically go
through four stages of development: (1) unconsciously incompetent; (2)
consciously incompetent; (3) consciously competent; and (4)
unconsciously competent.

There's
only one way to get to stage 4: practice. When your tired, sore, wore out,
beaten down and on the verge of quitting, you practice some more. This
is true of any and every task, hobby, sport, or art you decide to engage in. While I was contemplating this topic in the midst of composing this blog entry, another old maxim came to mind - "Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach."

In terms of teaching subject matter in institutionalized educational systems based on an imposed curriculum from a centrally planned, bureaucratic organization, that quote has a lot of truth to it. It is certainly relevant to the current system of indoctrination carried out by our nationwide public education system.

Despite my regular denunciations of the public education system, I know many public school educators. Many of them are passionate educators doing their best to teach the subjects of their passion. Foreign language, music, writers, mathematicians, scientists and artists. Teachers teaching subjects they love. But as a cog in the great brainwashing machine, all must teach other mandatory classes like "Social Studies" (socialist studies), history, and other courses for which they do not have expertise nor passion, but rather have to teach such subject matters from the "book." In regards to this aspect of the education system in this country, Mencken is absolutely correct.

When it comes to the 4 stages of competence alluded to by the Shutterfinger commenter, I believe Mencken's derogation of the teacher archetype is absolutely incorrect.

Those who cannot do, certainly cannot teach.

However, the converse is not true. Many practitioners of art forms can personally reach stage 4 of mastery - unconsciously competent - yet cannot teach the techniques knowledge and experience they've gained to a student at stage 1. Many long time practitioners arrive at stage 4 intuitively, in which many hours of practice combined with natural talents allows a person to develop mastery, without explicitly understanding how they got there.

In other words, some talented individuals go from stage 1 to stage 4 over time without really gaining the technical insights of stages 2 and 3. These people we call "prodigies" or "born naturals."

But ask them to teach their art to a beginner, and they fail when their pupil doesn't grasp the nuances and techniques "the natural" intuitively developed.

Indeed, my first martial art instructor had a saying that he always repeatedly told our class, that directly contradicts Mencken's quote - "You never really know something until you are able to teach it to someone else."

When I was a student myself, I didn't really understand this. As a young child, I had participated in a large number of sports and activities that required athletic skill and developing eye-hand coordination. When I came to my martial arts class as a young man, many of the skills and abilities I first developed from prior athletic pursuits, made studying the martial arts easier for me. When I became an instructor, I learned an entirely new perspective. I had to learn everything all over again. To analyze, ruminate and re-consider aspects of things I had foolishly thought my knowledge of, was complete.

You think you've mastered some skill or trade? Good. Now teach it to somebody else. You'll find out real fast how much you really know and understand your chosen art form. By teaching others, you will also discover something else: no matter how much of a master you've become, there is always something new to discover and develop in your chosen pursuit. If anyone can claim complete mastery, that they have nothing more to learn - that is when you know the spirit of their personal artistic essence is dead.

The path to mastery is a road that never ends.

I'm not one for enthusiastically quoting vegan pacifists very often, but in the case of finding your passion and pursuing the path to mastery, Mahatma Gandhi said it best:

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Monday, November 12, 2012

When I think I've figured it all out, I learn something new, and then my paradigm shifts.

Again.

The latest paradigm I've adopted was inspired by Juicing for Men.
I've been juicing for close to two months now. It's one more practice I'm going to add to the panoply of lifestyle hacks that go against the mainstream, conventional wisdom of our mass media driven society.

I started Juicing For Men because most juicing sites have a New Age feel to them. They talk about the “energies” and “chakras” in juices. Most juice blogs treat juicing as all-or-nothing.
"Either go on a juice fast and a spiritual retreat, or don’t bother."

I think a lot of juicers want to become spiritual gurus or cult leaders.
Anyhow, there was no juicing forum for regular guys. While women can learn a lot from Juicing For Men, I built the site for regular guys who want to get fitter and healthier. Ideally women will take their husbands and boyfriends to Juicing For Men. “See, I told you this isn’t a bunch of hokey nonsense!”

Prior to reading up on this topic after both Danger & Play and Roosh previously linked to Juicing For Men, I had an inaccurate preconception of this practice called "juicing."

It appeared to be yet another hokey, emasculated veganist, new-age nonsense fad to me.

Juice To Boost Your New Age Chakras,You Vibrant Hippie!

Juice fasting?

Detoxification?

Bah. Cutting out most grain flours and industrially processed vegetable, grain and legume oil-based feed products, and eating plenty of healthy fats, animal proteins, veggies and some non-toxic starches like rice and potatoes is detox enough, as far as I was concerned.

Purifying and cleansing will naturally result from a long enough period of time for which you are not eating man-made, mass-produced, factory farmed FEED, and eating natural, organic raised animal and plant foods.

What is juicing really for?

It's for adding a surplus of vital nutrients, minerals and antioxidants to to your daily diet.

Better a surplus than a deficiency, no? Isn't that why most health conscious people buy bottles of vitamins and supplements?

Why would you "supplement" with a bunch of pills and powders, when you can supplement with fresh, natural, REAL FOOD processed by your own hand and made into a form that is more readily bio-available and immediately beneficial to your overall health and well-being?

Even if you eat the fast food and convenience-based processed fare of the S.A.D., and have no intentions of changing your dietary practices anytime soon, juicing will still benefit you.

Certainly more than the results of millions of dollars Americans spend on the vitamins and supplement industry every year, a large portion of which does nothing more than create a vast stream of expensive urine.

I regularly eat a lot of vegetables and fruits. Most meals are usually some main, meat-based main dish, with a side or two of broccoli or asparagus or zucchini or green beans or some other veggie, usually sauteed or steamed and drenched in butter and/or bacon grease, and liberally salted and peppered. I also eat salads on a regular basis, with homemade dressings based on extra-virgin olive oil and vinegar.
I also eat small portions of a wide variety of fruits as a regular dessert after most meals.

But when I discovered Juicing For Men, I realized that I could in fact increase my consumption of a much wider variety of plant fare...plant foods for which I normally would never buy, cook or eat - all without force-feeding myself despite the bitter or sour taste, sucking it up and forcing it down as medicine, just because it's "healthy."

Veggies like kale, chard, collard greens, celery, beets, red cabbage, Chinese cabbages like Pak Choy and Bok Choy, and ginger. I rarely ate veggies like that, primarily because I just didn't like the way they taste....even if they were prepared with fats I like such as butter, bacon grease or olive oil.
Throw 'em in my juicer, add some natural, fresh-ground Hawaiian sea salt, and I'm now drinking my servings of these formerly excluded veggies from my diet, in addition to the usual fare of plant foods I already have been consuming on a regular basis.

I've upped the dose of plant-based vitamins, minerals, nutrients, phyto-chemicals and anti-oxidants at every meal...and I don't feel like a grazing herbivore stuffing my face with a heaping plate of roughage to relieve the perpetual hunger that comes with the vegan/vegetarian-based lifestyle (been there, done that).

If you are one who needs a prescription for erectile dysfunction, you may want to give juicing that includes a large portion of beets and celery a try.
Both are rich in nitrates, which are vasodilators. They are known for engorging blood vessels and increasing blood flow. This increased blood flow is also good for your brain.

This is why nitrates are ubiquitous as a meat preservative in processed meats. It promotes dilation and blood flow so meats stay "red" or fresh looking much longer. Nitrates are why your bacon, ham, sausage and cold cuts that were processed and packaged many days before, don't appear brown and decaying when you buy them from the grocery store..

The same goes for your overall health and well-being. Up your dosage of Nitrates.

And really, it's not rocket science. Recipes need only be a rough guideline.

I'm currently drinking my own "V-12" juice on a daily basis. There's no need to be specific, nor do you have to measure, weigh or count anything. Just buy fresh produce and juice it to your preferred taste. It's all good.

I simply go to my weekly farmers market, and buy as much locally grown, organic produce I can find, take it home, and juice it into one large batch. This past week, I purchased about $20 worth of produce, and took about 45 minutes to make enough juice to last me a week. A week of twice-a-day, 12 oz. glassfuls I now drink as a matter of habit with my regular meals. I fill up several old glass 1.75 liter liquor bottles and keep 'em in the fridge to chill, ready for me to drink as desired throughout the week. And I'm not the only one to benefit from my new practice....my chickens are digging on the by-products as well.

All the pulp generated by my juicing serves as a nice supplement to my chicken's feed as well. I've noticed on days in which I give them juiced pulp, the following day I get more eggs and they have darker, more nutrient dense yolks. Juicing can be for the birds, too.

If you're curious to give it a try for yourself, rest assured, you don't need to spend a lot of money on an expensive, feature-filled juicer, either. As FitJuice states:

But when you’re a beginner juicing, it doesn’t make sense to sweat
the details. Buy a nice introductory juicer to get you started on your
juicing journey.

If you enjoy juicing, you’ll never want to be without juice. You’ll
wind up bringing your entry-level juicer to the office and buying
yourself a nicer one for your home.

I was fortunate to have my introductory juicer given to me as a gift.
Two months into this, and I see what FitJuice means. Someday soon, I'll be upgrading to a masticating juicer for sure. I want more yield from the greens! But for now, my cheap model centrifugal juicer is certainly good enough.

Don't fall for the false notion that unless you achieve the perfect result, it's not worth doing at all.

Don't let the optimal be the enemy of the good. In most cases, good, is good enough.

Monday, November 5, 2012

In any all-male environment I was ever around, mocking taunts and insults about a male's actions or behaviors that question his masculinity or heterosexuality was the norm. Status jockeying to establish the social hierarchy and sorting out who was the AMOG, and who was the omega(s) everyone else shit on...sometimes metaphorically, and in the case of young men, sometimes literally. I've been on both ends of the spectrum in the loosely defined hierarchy of male group dynamics.

Don't be a pussy!C'mon BOY!

Don't be a douche bag. Go home and cry to your mommy, you little fag.You're so gay.

Eh Boy, don't be a panty.

When faced with peers taunts and jibes, a male has some choices in dealing with it: suck it up, take it in stride, ignore it, or play along and have fun with it. Try to give as good as you get, and be a good sport about it.

Or you can wallow in your hurt feeeeelllings.

You can drop out of whatever group you're a part of so as to avoid the harsh words and taunting insults.

For the young male aspiring to gain respect and rise in any social hierarchy, all of the well known maxims of masculine development training apply:
"Pain is just weakness leaving the body," "When the going get tough, the tough get going," and "no pain, no gain."

They may seem like cliches, but they really are truths for men.

Physical strength can be developed by many, but it's the mental strength in the face of adversity that is the true development of your character, and gives you real world confidence

When I first took up feral hog hunting in the early 90's as a young man in my late teens and early 20's, I was beanpole skinny and had almost no visible muscular development. I was 155 lbs. of skin and bones. Back in those days, we used to go hunting twice a week. While I didn't look strong, I had developed good stamina from the hours of trekking through Hawaii's mountains, hacking through dense and humid rain forestry and ascending and descending steep river valleys repeatedly for hours on end.

We once took a friend who'd never been hunting before, his curiosity aroused after hearing our small group of regular partners telling hunting stories over drinks at various parties and social events. He was a Gym Rat and he certainly looked it with an Adonis physique - the V-shaped torso, bulging pectorals, six pack abs, and prominent traps. He could bench over 350+ lbs., and he made sure we all knew that. He was, of course, quite the ladies man. Cocky, arrogant, fun and humorous. Often, the life of the party kinda guy. The social scene AMOG. In a night club, at a party, he was "Hollywood."

He was also one of those guys that regularly teased and insulted other men for being "girly" and he was always teasing on guys like me for being too skinny, and that we needed to get into a gym to become a REAL MAN.

After listening to yet another round of hunting tales, he decided one day that he wanted to go and see for himself. If we could trek for hours, from dawn to dusk through the mountains, surely he'd have no problem since he was so much stronger than any of us. Often times friends would ask if they could come along. Many times we'd assess him and tell him in all honesty, we did not think he would be up to the rigors of the Hawaiian boar hunt. We had no such reservations of Gym Rat. He was known as the strongest guy in our social circles of all the young adult cliques in our town.

So we took him hunting in an area where you have to make a steep, long descent into a river valley. Some areas were switch backs, other areas where navigated by small trees you had to use, going from limb-to-limb to control your descent on the steep grade. Several parts of the trail had ropes because of a dearth of natural hand holds.

It took close to two hours to reach the river valley floor from this steep descent. It was also a hot and very humid day in that valley. No breeze, and we were all drenched with sweat and eagerly gulping down our water as we took a moments rest next to the river.

Then we noticed the dogs get excited at the mouth of a small gorge that fed into the main river we had just hiked down to. The dogs shot up the gorge and we had to quickly stow our water bottles into our packs and pursue the dogs. They were on the scent, and a boar was obviously nearby.

Sure enough, about a hundred yards up this winding, steep gorge, the dogs had cornered a good sized boar in the shallow river, and we let Gym Rat dispatch it with his brand new hunting knife he had bought for his first boar hunt.

Hanapa'a!

He was exhilarated. A big boar with prominent tusks on his very first hunt!

When I first started hunting, I had gone on over twenty different hunts with my friends, before I finally experienced such a catch. We had warned Gym Rat that most likely we would not catch a big boar, that he shouldn't get his expectations up...but you never know.

Some guys get all the luck.

We tied up the dogs and field dressed the hog and prepared for what was now the real work at hand - carrying that pig back to the truck. In Hawaii, we tie the front legs of our game animals to the back legs, than hoist it on our backs and carry it out as if you are wearing a back pack.

"Your turn for pack da pig, boy!"

The animals leg bones grind into your shoulders, and the weight is top heavy, making you unbalanced and constantly having to teeter and pause to regain your balance to avoid falling over. Packing the pig out is the real challenge to hunting feral hogs in Hawaii's mountainous terrain.

When people often hear that my friends and I hunt wild hogs, and that we often use a knife to kill the pig, most are in awe of what sounds like a primal and barbaric act. "You hunt wild boar with a KNIFE?!?!?!"

Meh. It's nothing, really.

The dogs do most of the work tracking it, cornering it and fighting it. The hunter just walks up, grabs the pigs back legs while it's engaged with the dogs, and you stick your knife into it's heart. If your aim is true, the pig dies in seconds.

That's not to say it's without peril or excitement, of course, Many times your dogs can hit several pigs roaming together, so your pack is split and you may only have 2 or 3 dogs fighting with any one particular pig.

Many a hunter who went for the pigs back legs engaged by only a couple dogs, had to quickly retreat when the pig breaks loose from the dogs and whirls like a dervish, flashing it's razor sharp ivories at dog and hunter alike. Some especially ornery hogs have been known to buckle loose from multiple dogs locked on it when the hunter went in for the kill. Many a hunter has been cut or bitten by wild hogs. I've had my own fair share of close calls, but for the most part, have fortunately avoided that particular scenario in my years of hunting. Catching the pig is no doubt the most exciting part of the hunt. The furious sounds of dogs scrapping a vicious boar usually causes an adrenaline dump as you approach the action to attempt dispatching the pig with your knife.

But the excitement after the catch fades as you clean the pig and prepare for the real challenge that is part of hunting the wild boar of Hawaii. At a young age, carrying pig on my back up steep mountainous terrain taught me some valuable life lessons. I learned the real meaning of mental toughness. I found what I thought initially was my breaking point, and yet managed to push on, well past it.

My partners and I have carried pigs for miles, and on occasion have run out of food and water and still hours away from our truck. In that situation, you have no choice. You suck it up, throw the hog up on your back when it's your turn again, and stagger onward, driven only by the desire to reach the end of the ordeal.

Many times one of the hunting party may feel exhausted and just want to quit. I've heard bizarre things come out of exhausted hunter's mouths (including my own)...things like "Let's just butcher the pig, make a fire and cook it right here. We can eat it, feed the dogs, and then sleep out and finish hiking out in the morning." Or, " Let's hang the pig in a tree, and come back for it tomorrow!" Such verbalized fantasies were never taken seriously. When one beaten hunter reaches this point, it's usually one of the others that goads us all into persevering in the ordeal.

"Come on you fag, it's your turn. Don't be a pussy, we're almost there..."

On such hunts where every inch of your body aches, your dry mouth thirsts for water, your belly rumbles for food, and you still got miles to go, you learn a lot about yourself.

You also learn a lot about the men you're hunting with.

On that particular hunt with Gym Rat, we all took turns carrying the boar down the gorge, back to the main river, and we began the ascent up the steep trail to get back to our truck.When we were not even a fourth of the way up the steep trail, Gym Rat began to fade. At first, we all took some pleasure in throwing all of his jibes he regularly used on all of us about getting into the gym:

"C'mon Princess! I thought you were strong?!? Don't be afraid to lift some weight! Don't be a pretty boy pre-Madonna! C'mon...let's go!"

He weakly laughed and grinned as we threw it all back at him...all of those common jibes and goading he regularly used on us all to try to get us to go to the gym and lift weights so we could be like him.

But as time went on, he began to take his turn carrying the pig for shorter and shorter intervals, before dropping it off of his back in exhaustion and collapsing onto the side of the trail to catch his breath and drink water.

Then we came to the vertical, dried up waterfall section of the trail, with a thick nylon rope hanging down it's length, tied off to a tree branch at the top. We all groaned at the prospects of carrying the pig up this part of the trail.

As we were carrying the pig on the lower parts of the trail, this waterfall section weighed heavily in our minds. We all knew this would be the killer part. We made short quips of dread on our way up the trail.

"Damn, that waterfall is gonna be a killer!""Think this is bad now...wait til we get to the waterfall."

We all decided to Jan Ken Po to determine which two of us had the task of hauling the hog up the rope. There was only one spot about halfway up the old waterfall in which the packer could take a break and trade off the pig to another hunter. Jan Ken Po is the Japanese-derived Pidgin slang we call the old Rock-Paper-Scissors game. There were four of us. Gym Rat and I won.

The two losers looked at us for a moment of annoyed defeat, and then they bargained with us. We agreed with their assertion. Since the waterfall was such a killer, once they got the pig to the top of it, Gym Rat and I would then have to carry the pig the rest of the way up the valley trail, back to the truck. The top of the waterfall was roughly about the half way point up the side of the valley.

Gym Rat and I watched our two partners struggle mightily to get the pig up the rope. Both almost fell, slipping and sliding with a pig on their backs. At the halfway point, they took a breather then switched off the pig. Throughout the entire climb, while one man had the pig on his back and his hands on the rope, the other man followed close behind to push the pig upwards to help the other bear the weight while they ascended

I got tired just watching them.

It took 10 minutes to descend this waterfall rope when we were hiking down.

It took close to 45 minutes to get the pig up.

Gym Rat and I simply sat at the foot of the waterfall and watched them. We did not dare follow up behind them on the rope, in case they fell.

Once they hit the top, they dropped the pig and yelled out in exuberant exaltation that their laborious, dangerous task was done.

OOOOOHHHHHH YYYYYYEEEAAAAHHH! FUCKIN' A!!!!!!!!!!! THAT WAS A BEEEYYOOTCH! WHOOOOOOHHHOOOOOOOOO!!!

The deal was made, and they did not have to carry the pig out the rest of the way. That was now up to Gym Rat and I.

As we took our turns climbing up the rope, the guys at the top rested and drank their water and recuperated from the exhaustive effort.

When Gym Rat and I got to the top, we had to take a breather as well. That waterfall was hard enough without 120+ lbs. of dead hog on our back to climb.

As we rested, our two companions got up with their second wind and told us, "See you guys at the truck, have fun with the hog!", and they took off.

Gym Rat took his turn first. He carried it about 100 yards up the trail. We switched, and I took it about a 100 yards. Then he took it 50 yards and then collapsed. At this point, we were both exhausted. We took a long break and finished up the last of our water in our packs. I hoisted the pig on my back and began the torturous ascent again.

I walked until I felt like I could walk no more. Endlessly upwards. One foot in front of the other. I could hear my heart beat pounding in my head. I was gasping for air. I began to teeter uncontrollably along the trail. I finally gave in and collapsed on the side of the trail, this time not even bothering to take the dead pig off my back. I lay there for a few minutes atop the dead pig while I caught my breath.

Finally, I slid my arms out and sat up. I looked at Gym Rat. He wouldn't look at me. I said, "Your turn." His head sank further. "I can't, bro. I'm done."

I was dumbfounded.

Gym Rat outweighed me by at least 50 lbs., and most of that was muscle. But the pig and the mountain broke him in a way the weight bench in the gym never had.

All of the insults and teasing he'd doled out to all of us non-weight lifting friends flashed through my mind.

How many times he laughingly called us pussies and fags and little boys for not getting our skinny asses into the gym.

"What?!?!?!?"

He didn't answer me, He just sank his head into his chest and leaned back into the side of the steep trail.

I got angry, and caught my second wind. Wordlessly, I arose, and hoisted the pig on my back and began the laborious ascent up the trail once again.

He rested as I headed up trail for a few minutes, then he got up and slowly followed me.

Thrice more I had to stop and rest. Thrice he wordlessly sat down across from me and refused to meet my eyes. I became disgusted. Then enervated. I realized that despite all his muscles he'd built up in the gym, his mental strength was sorely lacking. He quit. I would no longer even try and ask him to take his turn.

In the face of his failure, and years of his condescending teasing and japes, I felt an inner fire grow as I continued to struggle uphill with the dead weight on my back.

Despite all the muscles and the impressive muscular build, I knew then that I was mentally stronger than him. I had more willpower. That knowledge drove me. The thirst, the exhaustion, the pain all became more bearable as I realized this. I was carrying the pig, and I was still hiking faster than him. I began taking frequent but brief breaks, where I'd lean the pig against a tree or a rock for a few moments respite from the weight, then continue the upward staggering. We had run out of water. Every time I stopped, Gym Rat stopped a few feet behind me and wordlessly sat down and refused to look at me or say anything. I began to just ignore him as if he were not even there.

For two hours I sucked it up and drove myself on. As we neared the top of the trail, our partners who had already made it up well in advance after leaving us at the top of the waterfall, began to tease us, shouting out their taunts.

Gym Rat and I never responded. He wouldn't look at me, and I just continued to carry the pig up the trail.

When we finally reached the truck, I felt great relief. I dropped the pig at the foot of the truck bed and collapsed into an exhausted heap. I only stirred when one of the guys handed me a water bottle they had kept in the truck. Water had never tasted sweeter.

I never said a word about Gym Rat quitting on me, leaving me to carry the pig by myself up to almost half the trail.

But for ever after, he never ever again teased me about being skinny or weak. He also gave me great respect whenever we saw each other. He used to tell other acquaintances and strangers at parties and get togethers that I was "the man" and treated me like i was one of his best friends whenever we saw each other. I know he felt bad about quitting on me, and he appreciated that i never rubbed it in, nor told all of our mutual friends and acquaintances about it.

He eventually told our hunting partners about what happened. That he got too tired and couldn't handle it anymore, and that I had carried the pig out most of the way by myself. The two who had carried the pig up the waterfall and then left us at the top, were surprised to learn that I had carried the pig all that way by myself.

One of them, the owner of the hunting dogs (this was before I had my own pack), had kept the jaw with it's impressive ivory tusks as a trophy. Like most hunters in Hawaii, he kept all the impressive jaws strung up as trophies on his dog kennels. As the owner of the pack, he always got first choice of the meat cuts and the first claim to the jaw and/or tusks. After having heard Gym Rat's account, he later came over to my house and gave me the jaw from that pig and told me he thought that I deserved it. If he had known Gym Rat would quit on me, he would have never left me to carry the pig alone for that great a distance of steep valley trail.

Memories...

It was several years later that I acquired my own hunting dogs and began to string up my own collection of jaws on my kennels. Each one with it's own personal hunting tale and memories. Some came from boars that killed favored hunting dogs. Many of them are more impressive in girth and size of the tusks than that first jaw that my former hunting partner gave me.

But that first jaw is the only one I had professionally cleaned and mounted onto a plaque by a taxidermist. It still hangs on my wall inside the house as a reminder of that day.

I never broke. I hit what I thought was my limit, but managed to find the will to go beyond it when I was forced to by the circumstances.

What I learned about myself that day is a lesson I've carried with me throughout my entire life. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going!" is not a trite cliche. It's truth. No one is born tough. Toughness is developed...forged in the fires of tribulation. You can't become tough until you challenge yourself and strive with all your will to overcome.